The first US Ambassador to be assassinated in Africa.

with his Charge d’Affaires, George Curtis Moore l.

On the morning of 1 March 1973, Ambassador Cleo Noel Jr., who had been sent to Sudan on an interim basis, was sworn in by his outgoing Charge d’Affaires, George Curtis Moore. Their wives attended the ceremony and were ‘wrapped in laughter and friendship’. Moore had also left a handwritten welcome letter for his replacement, Robert E. Fritts, which concluded with: So at the close of three and one-half of the finest years of my life, I welcome you to Khartoum and hope you will be able to make the same statement when you leave. Tragically for Moore, the day he swore in Noel would be his last before their brutal murders the following day. Had Fritts arrived any earlier, he too would probably have been a victim. 1 March 1973 would mark one of the most tragic events in the history of the American Foreign Service.

That evening, Moore was scheduled to attend a farewell reception hosted by Abdullah al-Malhouk, the Saudi Arabian ambassador in Khartoum. Ambassador Noel Jnr decided to participate as a courtesy. All was going well until about 7:00 pm, when the party ended. At that point, eight heavily armed Palestinians from the Black September extremist organisation burst in and seized Moore, along with Noel and Guy Eid, the Belgian chargé d’affaires. They were then beaten and tied up.

Later that evening, Robert E. Fritts, the individual designated to succeed Moore and stationed in Washington, received a summons to the State Department’s Operations Centre. Unbeknownst to him, Ambassador Noel and Moore had been taken hostage, prompting Bill Macomber, the Under Secretary for Management at the time, to assemble a task force aimed at monitoring and addressing the crisis. At the end of the meeting, Fritts was ordered to depart for Sudan within two hours.

Back in Khartoum, the gunmen issued their demands for the release of the hostages, which included the freeing of Abu Daoud, a leader of the Black September Organisation; Sirhan Sirhan, Robert Kennedy’s killer; and Palestinian women in Israeli prisons. The following day, however, President Richard Nixon stated that he would not negotiate with the terrorists. This aligned with a policy towards terrorist hostage takers of ‘no negotiations, no deals, and no concessions’ that was advanced by Henry Kissinger but opposed by Secretary of State William Rogers, who had refused to endorse it. It was based on the false notion that no terrorist would dare confront the US in such circumstances.

This was the trigger the terrorists needed, and as one would expect today, they proceeded to shoot and kill the hostages. George Thompson, an American spokesman, quoted witnesses as having said that Moore’s body bore signs of kicking and of pistol‐whipping and that it had multiple bullet wounds.’ That officials had found ‘spent shells scattered on the floor and a wristwatch that belonged to one of the slain.’ While Carol Roehl, another Embassy official who had identified the bodies, said, “They were almost unrecognisable,”

Subsequently, the remains were prepared and placed in some of the embassy’s caskets reserved for emergencies. In Washington, a joint funeral was held on 7 March at the National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. Cleo Noel Jr. and Curtis Moore were interred with military honours at Arlington National Cemetery.

However, the spouses of the diplomats, Lucille Noel and Sally Moore, appear to have been somewhat overlooked in the US government’s response to this catastrophe. Yet they, far more than the US government or any other entity, were the principal victims of these murders. It began with the arrival of Robert E. Fritts, the newly appointed Deputy Chief of Mission, who was then serving as the acting ambassador. Before their husbands were killed, they were allowed to write ‘notes’ to their wives. Upon being handed to the embassy, Fritts declined to deliver them personally to the wives and delegated the task to Sandy Sanderson, the administrative officer. Would it have made a difference to their perception of the State Department’s concern for their tragedy had the acting ambassador delivered the ‘notes’ instead of an administrative officer? In his 47-page interview with the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Fritts does not mention any instance in which he spoke to the widows or their children.

However, in Nairobi, Kenya, 25 years later, when the US embassy was bombed and several US diplomats killed, the attitude of the State seems to have changed somewhat. Madeline Albright, the Secretary of State, flew to Kenya and personally visited the injured, who were hospitalised. She also decided to fly back to the US with the coffins visible in the same compartment, and later even moved her chair to sit with the coffins on the plane. She wanted the US government to express sympathy for the victims at the highest level. It makes a difference.

Secondly, in their quest for justice for their husbands, the widows would endure further trauma, potentially for the rest of their lives, due to the tender mercies of Islamic justice. The Sudanese president, who was abroad when the incident occurred, appeared to express a feigned sense of anger and remorse at the killings. However, his true feelings regarding the murders became evident when he commuted the life imprisonment sentence for the killers to seven years. Despite this spiteful and demeaning reduction, he had no intention of accepting any responsibility to ensure they would serve their sentences. Instead, he surreptitiously handed them over to the PLO, the very organisation that the State Department would later determine had commissioned the murders. They were flown to Cairo to serve these sentences under supposedly house arrest conditions. The nature of their ‘detention’ allowed three of them to ‘escape’ from custody even before their terms began!

The US government’s determination to follow up on the matter over time was also disheartening. It was noted that Kissinger was ‘having a bigger picture in mind’ and that the State Department was ‘viewing the matter as “an” issue, but not “the” issue it had been.’ For the families of the deceased, however, the deaths of their spouses and parents would always be ‘the issue.’

Ambassador Cleo Allen Noel Jr. was born on 6 August 1918 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He attended the University of Missouri, receiving a B.A. in History in 1939, followed by an M.A. He worked as a lecturer at the University of Missouri before joining the United States Navy in June 1941. In 1945, he was discharged from the Navy with the rank of lieutenant commander. After joining the Foreign Service, he served at US consulates in Italy, Saudi Arabia, France, and Lebanon during the 1950s and 1960s

Noel, Jr would be the first US Ambassador killed by militants in Africa and the second of eight US Ambassadors assassinated since World War II. The first was John Gordon Mein, Ambassador to Guatemala, who was killed on August 28, 1968, by a gunman in Guatemala City; Rodger P. Davies, Ambassador to Cyprus, was shot on August 19, 1974, during a demonstration at the Embassy in Nicosia; Francis E. Meloy, Jr., Ambassador to Lebanon, was killed by a gunman in Beirut on June 16, 1976; Adolph Dubs, Ambassador to Afghanistan, was captured and killed in Kabul during a rescue attempt on February 14, 1979; and J. Christopher Stevens, Ambassador to Libya, was killed on September 11, 2012, during an attack on the Mission in Benghazi. However, this site focuses on African stories, so we will not review the other equally important assassinations.